Contractors working in Qatar will need to update their employment contracts, and can expect tougher competition in attracting labour, thanks to a new law that guarantees a minimum wage and makes it easier to change employers, a law firm says.
Coming into effect 9 October this year, Law No. 17 sets the minimum wage at QAR 1,000 per month ($275), plus QAR 500 per month ($137) for accommodation and QAR 300 per month ($82) for food.
— Global Construction Review
Moreover, the new law also removes the requirement for foreign workers to obtain a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from their employer to work for someone else, GCR reports. This will naturally heighten the competition for skilled labor since employees will be free to switch employers if they desire to do so.
10 Comments
So now we applaud them for making slight human right progress? They are still very far behind and should still be shamed.
considering... most of the workers are foreigners whose diplomatic documents are seized by the "companies" that they work for when they arrive at the construction site. This is slightly higher than the slaves who built the pyramids... Jobsite in malaysia that I visited had all poor folks from indonesia doing the work. A couple of them even had hard hats... and ratty tank tops, shorts and no shoes.... Housed in make shift tents on the job site. Safety goal for the project was no deaths. Not to mention a whooping $6k a year. Wonder how many processing fees and taxes they pay the government and the companies they work for? I wonder if they even keep half of that? There's probably an option for the company to keep the per diems if they provide the housing and the food... Hmmm. that makes sense... looks good on paper though...
Meanwhile in america...
500$ a month, out of which the contractors will probably pocket half. Guess this is what it takes to build the shity shit that ZHA, Nouvel and UN architects design. We pretend to be so woke as a profession, but all is lost when it comes to the lives of laborers from poor countries...
you forgot to mention Alejandro Aravena or OMA...
Architects make drawings and don't have any say in how the workers are treated building their designs, they have a say in how their employees and interns are treated making the drawings and designs. Now, should you as an architect do projects for inhumane regimes in "backward cultures"? That's a different discussion altogether, I would be uncomfortable in supporting a regime with my architecture that stones gay people or victims of rape and treats non-believers as second rate or worse, but maybe that's just me...
Rando, you make a good point and I assume that most would agree but there is also something to be said for an office that willingly accepts fees from a client with well known and glaring human violation history. Architects produce drawings, obviously, but as you know, design is not a vacuum; ie, there are external factors involved. In this case, one of them is the piss-poor backwards culture (no need for quotes, it's an objective fact). So if someone willfully accepts to take these slavers' money in exchange for some sort of shiny curvy dick-shape contraption, then they also should face criticism.
Agreed!
Yes, but amazingly, the only countries that will build their shiny dick sculptures at that kind of scale are the slave driver countries. Unfortunately, history forgets these things quite easily.
I heard Chris Rocks voice in my head when reading this “you’re supposed to pay people you dumb mother fucker !”
"... I ain't never been to jail..." You're not supposed to go to jail, you low-expectation mothafucker. Confirm, I also thought the same.
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